This invention relates generally to electronic messages and, more particularly e-mail systems utilizing an HTML format for delivery over a TCP/IP protocol network.
E-mail systems of various types have been available for many years. In such systems, user computers or “machines” typically are either intermittently or are permanently connected to a network, such that electronic mail (“e-mail”) can be sent from one user's machine to another. Most e-mail systems allow address books and distribution lists to be maintained, such that the e-mail can be sent to one or more designated user machines.
Proprietary e-mail systems have, of course, the associated cost of implementing and maintaining both the network and the e-mail system. With the advent of global networking systems, the cost of e-mail systems has lessened and the popularity of e-mail systems has increased. For example, proprietary providers such as America On-Line (AOL) provide a number of network services, including e-mail, for a set monthly fee. Other web-based service providers, such as Hotmail from Microsoft, Inc., provide free e-mail services to anyone with access to the Internet. While this typically requires the payment of a monthly fee to an Internet Service Provider, other service providers such as AltaVista of Compaq Computer Corporation provide free Internet service. The combination of free e-mail services with or without free Internet services has resulted in an explosion of e-mail accounts and of e-mail messages.
A problem with e-mail documents of the prior art is that they tend to be fairly plain and, therefore, not terribly compelling as a transmission media. Most e-mail is plain text, although the capability of including hypertext markup language (HTML) can add some visual interest. There are even some e-mail providers which provide the capability of embedding static and dynamic graphics. However, e-mail is truly a “push” technology in that it is “pushed” from a server to a recipient without any real interactivity between the recipient and the received media. For this reason, while e-mail such as jokes, etc. may be passed around, the message is quickly discarded and forgotten.